Aftermath
by mearfster
Summary: In a post-war world, Weiss Schnee struggles to maintain what's left of both teams RWBY and JNPR. However, her role as a strategist weighs on her; her guilt stems from the fact that she may have sent her friends to die in the battlefield. While dealing with all of this, Weiss comes to terms with her mortality. (First-time author, reviews are appreciated :) )


Author's Note: I'm new to this site, and I'm sorry for any editing or formatting issues. I'm still trying to work out how I want chapters to play out (something I neglected to do with this story). As such, this whole story is just one large "chapter", something which makes it hard to read and which I'm sorry for. T.T I'll do better next time, I promise. For now, please ignore the excessive length and hopefully enjoy yourselves.

* * *

The war had been over for a long time already. My home, Schnee Mansion, had long since been returned to me. The only hints that suggested that it had once been a command center were the microscopic holes in the wall that once help up maps and charts.

Yes, it was mine again. And just as lonely and desolate as it was before.

After years of solitude, unable to lift my blade once more again and without a company to guide, I couldn't take it anymore. I had to see somebody, anybody.

I went through great pains to find those that had been my friends, long ago. Part of it was excruciating. Looking all over the continent for the scattered remains of my friends reminded me that not all of them were there. Contacting Jaune had been one of the hardest things I've ever done. Ever since Pyrrha was gone, he had sunk into the easy escape of alcoholism, and turned into a degenerate.

I can't say I blame him.

There were others, too. Blake, as reclusive as ever, had initially refused my offer of meeting once again at the mansion. I understood, though. All of the memories she had tried to forget would certainly come back once more to haunt her with just a simple glance, a hello, an invitation. And only after months of quiet suggestions had she considered that maybe the best way to deal with the pain and loss was to work it out with those who could listen and understand, rather than let the memories run rampant in her mind.

One by one, they began to trickle into the mansion. Jaune had arrived first, desperate to reclaim some sense of his former life, and had tried to stay as sober as possible. Yet his hiccups, I felt, were much better than the tears that would find their way down his face. It was painful. She was Jaune's everything, the companion to his soul. She had transformed him into a capable and reliable warrior, then when he began to trust in himself, she had left him, left all of us.

Then came Blake. I didn't see her arrival. I didn't expect to. She was just simply here one day. She was sitting on the balcony, listening and watching to the forest below. I gently chided her, telling her that the climate was much harsher than what she was used to and that she would catch a cold. She still preferred to be outdoors.

And very slowly, the mansion came to life. I don't know how Velvet knew, but she came. And Ren, invited by Jaune, showed up one day. This was not for me alone, although I benefited greatly from it. It was for all of us, being together again. Even though the congregation was fractured, we did our best to ignore the holes in our teams.

I don't know where he got them, but Jaune acquired some paints and some brushes. It turns out that he can paint beautifully, creating the most beautiful scenes that he saw in a picture or a book. The walls were covered with forests, forever in bloom, or valleys that shone red and gold and all of the colors in between. Blake started a small library, bringing the books she owned and those that were given to her over the years. And it started to feel like a semblance of home.

That night, Jaune was nowhere to be seen. However, Blake heard his sobs in the night, and woke me to tell me where he was. The attic that we never used. There was more than even space for all the furniture in the house; all the attic had inside of it was a cabinet and the sword I had hung up long ago. I climbed up in the attic, and saw Jaune painting and sobbing. I told him that he might ruin the paints if he got tears in them. I don't think he cared.

He was painting us, long before the war.

We were relaxing on a hill, with a lone tree at the crest. The sun was setting. And the people we lost…they were there again. Nora, hanging upside down from a branch. Pyrrha, lounging with her back against the tree. Yang, sipping coffee. And…Ruby…resting peacefully on her back, looking at the setting sun. All of them, gone.

I asked him how long he had been working on this. He said ever since he had gotten the paints. He said that putting it on the walls was better than letting it live in his memory, trapped and corrupted by the years and the pain. And I quietly agreed.

He asked me if we had held a funeral for Ruby. And…I told him that we had not. I wanted, for as long as possible, to keep the hope alive. A body was never found. That, in and of itself, was enough for me. Ruby was eternal, immortal to me. There was no way she could've died to something as petty as another human being. She wouldn't die that easy.

I stopped when Jaune started sobbing again. I should've been more careful. The absence of Ruby's body made the presence of Pyrrha's that much more painful. In fact, she lay behind the mansion, at the foot of an olive tree. Part of that is why Jaune had come…and did not want to at the same time.

Because the war spanned entire continents, only select groups of hunters and huntresses were sent to allying countries. Mobilizing an army across an ocean was simply out of the question. So we were sent. Sent to live, fight, love, die, in an unknown land, miles away. And die we did. Pyrrha, strangely, was first. We all thought that she was smart and strong enough to live the entire conflict out. But war is chaos, and hell. And none of us could've predicted that the shell our artillery fired could've been blown over twenty miles off of course. But it was what it was. And Pyrrha was dead, the first casualty of our own. After that, Jaune started to atrophy. He took more than his share of the drink, to drown her memory in the bottom of the bottle. He became reckless, taking risks that he should've, in all rights, died from. Catching grenades, charging artillery batteries on his own…things like that. And as he kept living, his soul kept dying, wanting to join Pyrrha but never being able to.

Blake padded up to join us with tea. I wondered where she got that tea from, as I've never had tea in the house, but I could guess that it came from the forest. I accepted the offered mug, and started sipping. Blake went to the mural, and slowly, I saw tears drip.

Yang died before anything was made official. All they had was promises; to stay alive, to settle down in a cottage in the forest, to live the rest of their lives in peace. But war is hell. And those promises Yang made, she could not keep. On a mission to pick Blake up from a reconnaissance mission, the plane was spotted and fighters were sent to give chase. And a small and fast transport ship, however much it tried, was simply outgunned by the fighters. Yang gave her life for Blake's; jumping out of the ship, she downed a fighter, straight into a battery of anti-aircraft stations. Blake made it out. But the invincible brawler didn't get up from her last fight. Hers was one of the bodies that we never recovered, so Blake was forced to make do with the only other thing Yang could give to Blake; Blake buried the ring. I don't know where. But I hope a tree grows over it. It would be fitting for the ring to take on those broken promises and give life to something with them.

And then there was Nora. Nora went insane in her last few months, that much was certain. Ren couldn't control her. She was driven to madness by the constant losses, the death that shrouded her personality. And eventually, when the inevitable ending to her story came, she just wasn't the same person she used to be. The artillery round didn't kill Nora. It killed what used to be her. Ren could never forgive himself for that. It was his fault, he said, that he couldn't console her, promise her that everything would be okay. And then the war ended. Ren carried what was left of her to her birthplace. There, he laid the remains of his cherished friend to rest. He took her hammer, though. Again, I don't know how it survived, or even where it is now. But Ren no longer carries his pistols, either. Perhaps both their weapons were sealed away to a dark and gloomy fate, like my sword. Perhaps they were destroyed. Perhaps, they were given to a new generation of hunters and huntresses. I personally like the last option the best, but I know that wasn't likely.

And finally, the grand weapons master. Ruby. She was part of the team that was inserted in a grand gesture to end the war; shuttled in from hundreds of miles away, she was part of the team that stormed the castle. Eyewitness accounts say that she took down hundreds of men. It must have killed her; that gentle Ruby, always looking out for me, forced to kill those she swore to protect as a huntress. And it took its toll; after the battle, she was gone. MIA. Her cloak was found in the woods beyond, as well as blood and her trademark rose petals, but never a body. I think she's alive, still. It could be a hopeless hope. It could be the truth. Do any of us know? Why would she run, when she knew the battle was over? I couldn't think of a reason. Everything she knew was still here. I was here. And I missed her badly.

* * *

The next morning is when it started. The beginning of the end. It started with a cough, and sneeze, that told me that not all was well. I never got sick, ever. There was a reason why I lived my entire life, save for a few years, in the frigid cold. I was used to it. So I went to a doctor, promptly. I wanted to know if I was weakening, or if it was just a passing bug.

And then there were the red spots I could not explain on my sleeves. I would cough, and the sleeve would come away dotted with red. I thought, hopefully, that they looked like rose petals. They told me it was blood. But they always looked like petals.

Surprisingly, the remnants took it well. They told me it was just stress, that I should blow it off. They told me that it's just a passing thing. So I started letting Blake carry me, and confined myself to chairs and beds. I had to stay alive; not for just myself, but also because we couldn't take another loss. We just couldn't.

I became bored. Sitting was never exciting, I learned. One evening, I asked Blake to retrieve something I hadn't picked up in years. I asked for my sword back.

It felt right in my hands again, but it was starting to deteriorate. Rust and dust had accumulated over the years of neglect. And I thought to myself, what would Ruby think of the way I had treated my old friend? I took it upon myself to restore it to its former glory. And oh, how nostalgic it was. The rest of them started too. Jaune swore to himself never to lift his sword again… then he left to go retrieve it from where it lay, planted in the ground on the battlefield where Pyrrha had fallen. He told himself that he would find a worthy hunter in training, and bequeath him his sword. But he cleaned it first, first with his tears then with oil. Oil and tears. They don't mix, but in layers the glow they gave was beautiful.

The bug, whatever it was, seems to have passed. I have relegated the wheelchair to a life of inactivity in the far reaches of the attic. Now, I was able to talk, to live again. For those unfamiliar with it, war is more than just a stretch of several years of violence. It stays with you. It makes sure that there is nothing left of you, save for shattered fragments. The whole is long gone, lost to the void. Pieces may remain, but that's all they are. Nothing less, nothing more.

At first, it was hard talking about it. Nobody wanted to live through their lives again. Blake, I felt, was the least willing to talk about it. Having served on an assassination corps throughout her military career was worse than what we had to do, I felt. Killing in cold blood, over and over again, was certainly more terrifying to me than having the heat of battle in your veins. The adrenaline would kick in; the only things you ever saw, ever truly remembered, was the beginning and the aftermath. Blake saw it all, remembered it with a clarity that helped her once upon a time ago in her studies but now was the agent of her destruction. She remembered everything, every detail. She remembered their last words. He had a child waiting for his return, to apologize for his absence. That one had wanted to run a sweetshop for as long as he could remember. He would open it with his military pay, he promised himself. They all ended their dreams the same way; a red splash, a scarlet X on their dossiers. And Blake remembered all of it. Some of this we learned at her tribunal, some we learned from her whispers as she cried, watching the stars. I was not Blake; I couldn't speak for her. But for her, the stars seemed to hold some sort of promise, some sort of hope at redemption. And she wanted that more than anything.

And then there was Ren, who never actually fought but had to deal with what came after. He was a combat medic; universally liked, he would become friends with anyone who needed him. We all called him Doc at some point or another, but deep down we envied him. The red cross on his helmet was better protection than even the shields that some of us had carried; that red cross meant that the enemies would spare him. But he didn't get it easy, because he had to stare at the remains of the men, the friends that he had seen just ten minutes ago, laughing at some cheesy joke. He had to patch up the remains of shattered bodies, broken souls. He tried his best, he really did. He tried to be a smiling face for the rest of us to rally around. But he broke too. The shell that hit the frontline that day was nothing out of the ordinary. But Ren, running up, found his worst nightmare grinning back at him.

That was Nora's company. And there were no survivors.

How fitting, then, was Nora's last action?

A boop on the nose. That's all Ren had to remember her by.

For Jaune, at least he had a conversation with Pyrrha. I'll never know what he said to her, but at least he was able to exchange a few words with her. Whatever they were, they didn't help. After that battle, Jaune used his injury, some shrapnel to the knee, to leave the service, where he used his disability and welfare benefits for drink. A desperate ploy, from a desperate boy, to escape despair. I can't say it didn't work; it just cost him everything else. When they sent him his medal, he threw it out the window, along with the respect that was due to him and the rest of his life. And in that sorry state, all he did was drink and sleep. Surely he would've wasted away, had I not found him.

Velvet, on the other hand, stayed home. But that statement, war is hell, has never been false. Velvet still had to deal with its effects. The biggest was the fear; the fear that she would be revealed, that those who had hidden her had their very own price. And they did. Nobody cannot be bought; for those kind, caring individuals, their price was the greater good. Give one rabbit Faunus over, and save dozens of lives. Nobody saw it coming, though. Ozpin wouldn't be one to do that. Glynda wasn't someone to give someone up. But that's what they did. And what they gave Velvet up to was nothing short of a holocaust. The fear was real, palpable. The fear was something to BE feared. Velvet was one of the lucky ones; she was spared execution simply because the war had ended. But that doesn't mean she was trusted, by any means. Cast out by everyone, the only respite she ever found was the thought that we would come home and rescue her. Half of that was true.

And then there's me. In essence, I was the one that everyone should've blamed; they were just too nice to do so. I was the general, the mastermind, the tactician. And my sin was that I viewed everyone as an object, a pawn, a unit to be manipulated. And I didn't care if they were going to die, if they were going to be sacrificed, until after everything was said and done. And the guilt haunts me to this day. Would Ruby still be here if I hadn't thrown her into that raid? Would Pyrrha, Nora, Yang, still be here if I hadn't thrown their lives away with both hands? I will never know. But the possibilities are there, and I can't just ignore them.

It's a good thing, then, that we're together here. It helps, just a bit, being able to talk things out. Our fear are no longer our own, and together we stand united against them. And light shines in the darkness. We might be fragments of who we used to be, but we can put some of it back together. And we try, not for just ourselves, but in memory of those we lost.

As the weeks pass, I start to see the pattern behind Jaune's drawings. The first floor is nothing but the memories he would rather treasure, and incidentally, the paintings he sees the most. I recognize some of them; Beacon's gates, the view of the Forever Fall and the Emerald Forest. The fireworks that we all saw from the hill overlooking the city. And then there are some that I don't recognize; the moon from an unknown vantage point, Beacon's spires framing the shattered wreck. A small cottage in the woods, smoke rising from its chimney. But as you start to ascend the staircase, the colors shift, and the images start to darken; lines of people, holding rifles, holding empty bowls. Empty cities, and empty skies; the moon is absent, as are the stars. The only thing holding this world together are the clouds; dull grey, and lifeless.

All of this culminates in what can only be described as a heart of darkness on the uppermost floor; splashes of red adorn the field, pockmarked with craters. Gallows, thankfully empty, rise on the walls, and the ceiling is pitch black. And I see the small specks of light, so feeble, threatened by the darkness, fading and flickering. In the center of each of them is a person, one that we swore never to forget. They're small and scattered. And they're all walking away.

As you keep going, however, the darkness fades into a beautiful midnight blue. And as you climb the ladder into the attic, the scene changes into that beautiful starry night on the hill. Just all of us, looking out to the stars, the willow on the tree sighing in the wind…

I would never buy a hill with a willow on it. Never. Not because I don't think the sentiment is beautiful, but because I know I would never do this painting justice. It doesn't feel right without everyone present, after all.

In fact, nothing does.

* * *

The dull ache wasn't bearable any longer. I had to get out, I had to look. This ache lay dormant for years, but now…with everyone here…it grew once more. I had to look.

I had to ask people, though. And I didn't fancy going alone. Blake was gone, presumably to the forest. Jaune was painting. Ren was sleeping. So I asked Velvet to come with.

She didn't hesitate, just getting up and opening the door.

She was a little more hesitant when I led her to the destination. I could understand. After all, she didn't trust these people at all. I knocked on the door.

Ozpin opened the door.

After greeting us properly, he invited us in and offered us coffee, which we accepted. Velvet was a little apprehensive, but did her best not to show it.

After coffee was served, Ozpin politely and properly asked why we were here. I answered with two reasons: first, to ask about Ruby, and second, to ask about Velvet. Ozpin just took a seat.

I thought he knew something about Ruby's location. After all, he was the closest thing she had to a proper mentor, aside from her uncle Qrow.

He just smiled.

At this point, I snapped. He owed us everything. He sent some of us out there to die on the battlefield. The rest gave up their souls. All because he was the one that offered us, as hunters and huntresses, to the military for their use. And we lost everything as a result. I reminded him of his debts to us, and the smile left his face. Yet he said nothing. But he must have known something, I'm sure of it. The smile. It wouldn't have been there otherwise. But I couldn't make him talk.

I asked him about his debt to Velvet, of all people. At this, his neutral expression grew into a frown. He asked Velvet what she wanted in return for his earlier actions.

At this, Velvet's eyes hardened. She told him that she wanted those seven months of her life in a concentration camp back. Ozpin sadly told her that he couldn't give her that. Velvet then leveled her head, looked straight into his eyes, and asked for his help in mending our lives, considering that he had corrupted him in the first place.

Ozpin had the decency to lower his gaze. He always was the mysterious man with power; we knew nothing of his past, of his backstory, of his motivations. We just trusted him. To this day, I believe that that trust we placed in him was misguided. And now, when he was no longer the immortal god he once was to us, he couldn't even repay his debts to us.

I don't even remember what happened next. One moment, I was mad. The next, I was fading…

* * *

I woke in a hospital. Immediately, I was surrounded by a battery of doctors, all demanding me to do something different. Sit up, lie down, hold my fingers out, look this way… I couldn't stand it. So I just calmly ordered them to speak, one at a time. They obeyed. They always do.

The lead doctor, I assume, spoke first. He told me that I had fainted and that Ozpin and Velvet had brought me to the hospital. Then he asked me what color my blood was.

I told him that my blood was red. Red like roses.

He frowned.

That's when I started getting scared.

He told me it was black, black like the night.

He told me that I should spend the rest of my days quietly resting. He told me that my lungs are failing; they couldn't sustain me. My very own body, denying me the skies.

Shouldn't we be guaranteed at least our own sky? After all…

To err is human, so the sky is our birthright…

* * *

Blake wheeled me home. The wheelchair was to be a constant fixture in my life from now on, as was the oxygen on the rack behind it. I would no longer be able to breathe the same air as the rest; I was forever isolated from the same sky the others shared. Not even able to smell the roses one more time.

They all told me that they would support me through thick and thin, of which I'm glad. I told them, however, that this changes nothing. I might need more help in doing so, but my objective was the same. I would find Ruby. I had to. Even if….even if all we found was another headstone.

I expressly forbade the medical staff to alert anybody as to my condition. I guess my father's influence still supersedes my own. He came to the house today, noting the paintings on the wall. I don't know if he was judging them silently or approving, but he didn't comment on them. Instead, he sat down on the couch and asked for a talk. Ironically, this request meant that he talked to me more than he had talked to me in the past ten years. Without pointing this out, I asked Blake to leave us be for a time.

My father asked if he could do anything for me. I asked if he was offering this because of his outstanding debts to me, or for some other reason. At this, he dropped his gaze. And to those who know my father, he does not do this to anybody. Seeing as I had visibly affected him, I decided that this was the real thing. He wanted to reconcile.

Adopting a gentler tone, I told him about the diagnosis. Instead of looking up, he informed me that losing me would be the end of his world. I agreed. The eldest Schnee had never been one to socialize, instead preferring to immerse himself in his work. Because of this, he had two things he loved; his wife, and his daughter. His wife was long gone. And his daughter…was soon to be gone. And he regretted his life; he regretted the countless hours spent maintaining his company. Which lead him to try to patch up his relationship with his one remaining relative. The news of my diagnosis came shortly after this realization on his part; for him, it was only a reminder that he was too late.

But I took pity on him. He was my father, after all. I asked him for two things. The first was to ensure that my friends lived in comfort for the rest of their lives, long after I was gone. The second…it pained me to do this, but the second was to ask him if he could find a particular Ruby Rose. This was supposed to be my mission. It was supposed to be something private, something hidden from public scrutiny. But she had not been found for years on end, and there was only so much I could do on my own.

So I let him in.

I told him about the last time I had ever seen her.

The castle raid. It was the last, the final, objective of the war. I sent her in as a reinforcement to the special operations team that was already in there. We airdropped her over the moat; I told her to stay safe. I told her that this was it, the end of the line. I told her that we just had to do this one last thing, and then we would be free. Free to live our lives as we chose, free. Finally free of war.

She looked me in the eyes, and smiled. Then she told me to wait for her to come back. And then she dropped, straight into the fray below.

I had eyewitness accounts of her all the way into the center of the castle. Soldiers testified. Their testimonies matched up. I had the forensics department inspect every inch of that castle. What was I looking for? A stray rose petal, a splash of blood, anything to tell me what happened to her. I wanted her desperately to come back.

When they told me they found the cloak in the woods, I had to come see.

It was hers, alright. The same little scuffs, the same little tears at the bottom where it dragged on her heels. And the rose petals were hers, too. That was indisputable. The amount of blood, though, asked more questions than it answered. Yes, she was wounded. Yes, it was hers. But was it enough to incapacitate her? Enough to bring her down? I don't know. I've seen her bleed copious amounts before, on missions we held together. But I didn't know her limits. I didn't know if she could survive a liter, 2 liters, maybe a half-pint before she felt the effects. I didn't know if she healed the cut after the fact.

In short, I didn't know if she was dead or alive.

In the end, I had to give up searching for her, at least for the time being. I had scoured every inch of that wood, and there was nothing in there that helped me. She had disappeared, simply overnight.

My father promised me the world, when I was younger. Now, I didn't want the world. Too much responsibility, too much pain in the world. But I wanted something else now. I wanted Ruby Rose. And that's what he promised me. He promised.

I don't know if he could keep it.

* * *

I didn't want to wait, while Father's various detectives went among their work. I wanted to do something, be somewhere, that wasn't this house. Certainly, it was much better than it used to be. The friends that lived in it made it a home, rather than just a house. Their company was enjoyable, and slowed the sense of deterioration I was feeling.

But I still felt it.

I know that I don't have much time left. And I intend to make as much of it as I can.

I don't want my legacy to be that of the heartless general that sacrificed everything in order to win. I want my legacy to be ME. The Weiss Schnee of Team RWBY, the one that lived, loved, learned. I want to be remembered as such.

But what could I do? I was an invalid. I couldn't support myself. Hell, I couldn't walk on my own two feet anymore. Had to be pushed everywhere in this damned wheelchair. Couldn't do anything anymore but wait to die.

I felt like I was drowning but I just wouldn't DIE. I could feel it already. The world had no use for me any longer. I knew that. But I wanted it to be quick, not like this.

Either let me live for kill me quickly. Please.

That night, I went to each of my last remaining friends and asked them if I had any dues left to pay, before…I couldn't pay them back.

I talked to Jaune first. I had caught him in the middle of a nap, but I didn't care. Naps were eternal. I was not. When he cracked an eye, I told him so. He just sat up and blinked. Then, he started talking.

He told me about those years in which he had fallen off of the grid, immediately following his desertion. If anything, he said, the drink and the loneliness made it worse, much worse. He saw everything vividly, as if he was reliving the experience, when he was drunk. And he couldn't do anything to change the events. The only reason he drank, he said, was so that he could see Pyrrha one more time. One more time to apologize, one more time to try and fulfill the promise of eternity he had once made with her. And it was hell for him, a hell that never ended, only taking breaks when the morning came. Because of that, he said, he would never touch drink again. He smiled, and told me that anyways, he had another way of apologizing. By making other people's lives just a little bit better, if he could. That was the gift that she had given him; love, live, learn. To do otherwise, he told me, would be a waste of her life. And he told me that there was nothing more owed between me and him. While I might have turned him into a cog in the gears of war, he told me that I prevented his whole life from becoming that. And he thanked me, and left me sitting there. Not crying, not sobbing. Just staring at the wall behind the couch.

That wall. The mural, where we were entering the gates of Beacon. All of us, smiling. And Pyrrha's hair…  
Red, like roses.

I talked to Ren next, who was in the kitchen. He was drinking tea, in his trademark fashion; the mug was resting on top of his outstretched hand. He looked at me, then looked back at the view through the glass door. It was beautiful. The forest was dusted white; it was pure. Untouched.

I asked him if there was anything left I owe him.

He put the cup down on the table.

Then he looked me in the eye, and told me that the ones that I did owe were long gone. He said it would be an insult to their memory, however, to chase down their dues. Instead, we should let them lie and live life as they would've wanted us to.

With that, he picked the cup back up and turned his gaze towards the forest.

I softly asked Blake to wheel me into Velvet's room. As she turned to leave, I asked her, with as much volume as I felt I could spare, to stay.

Then I asked them. Did I have anything left for me to do…before the inevitable sets in?

It was Velvet who answered first. After all, it was my fault she was in there, to see the horrors of war. But she thanked me instead. She told me that I had rescued her from a fate dictated by concentration camps and judgment. In doing the only thing I could to save her, by recruiting her as a medic, I exposed her to the pain and the suffering of war. But Velvet… she would've gone through it all over again. That was the relief that equality, for once, had brought. And she was willing to pay her price.

Then Blake started talking. She told me that she once prayed for strength and power, to be able to move past the whole ordeal. And I gave her that. Not in the way she wanted, granted, but nevertheless she found strength. The missions I gave her, the things I made her do, numbed her. And through that void in her life, the lack of emotion, she found the strength to carry on. She was capable. And she had the strength she wanted. If this was the price she had to pay, she said, she would gladly take it. She was thankful. And she accepted the price she had paid.

* * *

The next morning, I called my lawyer.

I still had some business to take care of.

Officially, I still held the same rank I used to; I was, and still am, a general of the army. And even though I gave up my military command, I still have access to the same information and privileges I once had. I still have access to investigations, to operations, to research and development…

And also for records on personnel.

Even if they weren't part of the military anymore, their entire past was at my fingertips. Well, at my lawyer's. They didn't want me exerting myself.

Many of us weren't proud of our pasts. Blake, in particular, was still running from hers. Jaune couldn't get a job anywhere respectable anymore because he had been arrested so many times for being drunk in public. We were human. We made mistakes. But we couldn't get rid of them, no matter how hard we tried.

I didn't care about the consequences, about the repercussions. I was dying. There was nothing I could do for myself anymore. That was certain. But there were others I cared about, that certainly would outlive me. So now the only thing I could do now was simply make the best of this.

I gave the go-ahead for my lawyer to begin altering their pasts.

New lives, new starts. The sad part is that… I would never see mine.

The lawyer stayed a bit after that, then took his leave. Before that, however, he told me the each for Ruby didn't produce anything yet. And then he took a document from his briefcase, and slid it over the table.

He told me that they approved it.

I wrote this, signed this, on the hospital bed where my diagnosis was given. The bed where my future died.

It read, "The Last Will and Testament of Weiss Schnee".

When he left, I asked Blake to bring me Myrtenaster. I put the document in its case. I found it strangely comforting; the weapon was a reminder of all my days at Beacon. The days where my life started, when I met my friends. Fitting, then, that I would leave my will with Myrtenaster. I trusted the blade to hold whatever was left of me. First the beginning, now the end.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

* * *

I told the waitress not to bother with coffee for me. Everyone else had some, though, as well as some sort of breakfast item. Blake and Velvet were eating some sort of pastry. Jaune opted for the heartier eggs and bacon, while Ren had a loaf of bread. Nothing else.

It was quiet at the diner. The waitresses didn't know our names, but they certainly knew our orders and our faces. They treated us well. Business tends to do that to returning customers.

It was a quiet gathering. The clock said it was around 10. The diner staff was resting after the breakfast rush. We were quietly talking about things of no importance; current events, the new teacher at Beacon, things like that.

Blake was in the middle of raising her mug for a sip when the door opened. She stiffened, and dropped the mug.

We all looked up and at the door.

I asked him if he was here to kill me, because Adam Taurus had walked in the door.

Instead of answering, he asked if he could take a seat.

I told him yes, but at the far end of the table. And I told him to get to the point quickly.

He sat, and looked down. The mask was still on. There were pictures of it in Blake's file that I recently went through. Still the same. A blast from the past.

He sat, and told us that he was here to do two things.

The first thing he did was tell Blake he was going to leave. He was going to drop off of the grid, he told us. No more clandestine activities. No more hijackings. No more crime. He was going to live like his ancestors did; peacefully. He told me that I was a large part of this. One of the very few things I was proud of, in fact, was leading the cause for equal treatment of Faunus. I accepted his thanks without compliment.

Then he turned to me. Have you heard of the reason why cherry blossom trees are pink, he asked.

I told him that I wasn't familiar with that.

He told me that in olden times, they used to bury their warriors underneath these trees. The trees would grow with the blood of those warriors, and that blood would turn the petals pink.

Then he told me that an entire forest was turning red.

He told me that there was a forest in the far reaches of the north that was famed for the blossoms the trees had every spring. They used to be white, he said. There also used to be a Grimm infestation there.

But now the trees were blossoming pink. And he looked for weeks, he said, but he couldn't find any Grimm at all. All he found were gouges in trees that looked like nothing short of a machete. Or a scythe, I added mentally. And the other thing he found, he said, were these.

He put a box on the table and opened it.

Rose petals. So many of them.

I asked Blake to start wheeling me home. Adam asked me where I was going.

I was going home, first. Then we were going to the airport.

* * *

It wasn't as easy as that. Despite the vast amount of both power and money that I had, I couldn't snap my fingers and expect all the logistics to work.

But I WANTED this. I NEEDED it.

I missed her so damn much. So much that I couldn't go on if I knew she was gone.

She was so young. Two full years younger than the rest of us. So bright, so energetic. So…irritating. But she was the light and the warmth of my days. She was my sunshine. Even after Beacon, even after the war started, even after we started dropping like flies, she was always there. Maybe not with a smile on her face, but she still was my sunshine.

I wouldn't let that go for anything. Ever.

But when she did leave, I didn't follow.

She told me than when she fought, she closed her eyes. She didn't want to see the terror on their faces, or their last grimaces when they died. She didn't want to see the cries for pity, she didn't want to see the tears or the rage after a friend has fallen. She didn't want to see any of that.

Eyewitness reports state that she opened her eyes in the last battle. That damned siege.

They say she went berserk, killing hundreds in a blind rage. Attempts to calm her were met with blank, empty eyes. And when it was all over…she left. Not a word to any of us. She just hopped the wall, and ran. Nobody could catch her, not with that speed.

To the rest of them, Ruby Rose was gone.

I knew better, though. She couldn't be. She was tough, she was smart. She was combat ready. She wouldn't have died out there. No, she's still out there, making a living for herself. I don't know how, but she is.

And I'm going to find her.

Everyone else had some misgivings. Blake, for one, thought that chasing shadows was a terrible idea. Ren told me to leave those who want to be forgotten in peace. Velvet didn't like the idea of moving me thousands of miles away on such short notice. Jaune said that he was terrified of what Ruby became.

Weak. All of them.

I would go to see her.

And they would come with me.

* * *

The wheelchair wouldn't roll evenly over the wooded ground. I, thinking ahead, used my sword for a cane and abandoned the wheelchair. They protested, insisting that I let them carry me, but I ignored them.

My own two feet or nothing. That's how I would see her again.

The trees above smelled faintly of roses. The petals that drifted down were a beautiful snowy pink, smooth and silky to the touch. Others were blood red; the rest were somewhere in between.

My foot caught something. A branch? A root? I was on the floor. The petals…were covering the entire floor…

I looked down. I caught my foot on the last thing I ever wanted to see on the floor.

Her scythe.

Why…would it be on the floor? She loved the damn thing.

Blake's hand were under my arms, trying to lift me up. I asked her to prop me up against a tree, hooking the scythe with my foot.

I leaned against the tree for a while, before sinking down to get a better look at the scythe.

There was a note. In the magazine slot.

"If you're reading this, can you please give it to Weiss Schnee? Thanks."

My hands were shaking. Blake quietly took the letter and slit it with her cleaver, then put her hand on my shoulder and dropped the letter into my lap. She went to go lean on another tree.

"Weiss. I'm so sorry, but I had to do this, OK? Don't be mad. I hate it when you're mad. It makes you so cold."

"But, anyways, don't be mad. In fact, don't be sad either. I hate it when you cry, too. And I won't be there to make you happy again."

"So don't be sad. You and I knew that this was gonna happen. It hurts. The voices in my head, they hurt. The people screaming in my ears, they hurt too. I want to make them go away. So I left. I didn't like it anyways. If we were being taught how to hunt monsters of the night, then why did I have to kill people? It doesn't make sense. I definitely wouldn't like it, if I was on the other side. It feels…wrong, somehow."

"So I did what I do best, which is take matters into my own hands. I'm not sure you agree. But as your team leader, I get to make the decisions. So I did. Nothing you can do about it."

"But Weiss… when people miss me, tell them that I did my part. I wanna think that I was a good person, that I did everything I could for you guys. Please?"

"I wanna think that I made the world a better place. I don't know if I did, but that's what I wanna think. What if they think I was just some crazy killer? I don't want to be that person."

"I don't know, Weiss. I have a choice. I can run forever. I can lie down and sleep with my lovely Crescent Rose. I can never have to hear the screams or see the eyes again. I don't want to see them again."

"Or… I can keep going. Do I want to? It'll be hard. I don't know. Do you want me back? I don't know. Do I want to make things better? Yes. But can I? I can't get the blood off my hands. It's not exactly easy…"

"I have a choice. Whatever happens, I'll see you on the other side, though."

"XOXO Ruby"

* * *

Did she?

Did she take her life?

Did my Ruby do this?

Did she? Did she… die… because of me? My beautiful Ruby? It would be easy, I know. The screams and the eyes… I know them too. One little pull of the finger…

I've thought about it a lot. But now?

Ruby?

I can't… I can't… I can't… breathe…

Blake, help me…

* * *

"Did they ever find her?"  
"Ruby?"

"I don't know."

"What do you mean?"

"They stopped looking after Weiss stopped breathing."

"… Ozpin… Is she dead?"

"…they found… a body."

"Hers?"

"Yes. But… the autopsy was a little… unusual."

"?"

"They found… rose petals. Not blood."

"What?"

"They don't know when she died. She could've slit her throat after she heard Weiss was dead. Or she could've done it years ago. We don't know."

"And…and…and the others?"

"Not doing well. They… they won't leave the house. Not with Ruby and Weiss buried on the premises."

"You can't… you can't make them better?"

"Glynda… you know this as well as I do. Ashes to ashes…."

"… Dust…. To dust."

* * *

Edit: Fixed two errors. First was a minor typo in the first line. The second was a little more... significant, dealing with ambiguities surrounding Nora's death. (I must have missed it in a read-over, because Nora actually died twice... But anyways, thanks to The Flippant Writer for spotting this)


End file.
